This week
we have another beautiful love song from the pen of our National Bard –
‘Ae Fond Kiss’ – which he wrote following the end of his platonic affair
with Clarinda and his humourous attack on Mauchline Kirk Elder William
Fisher which is a poem quaranteed to amuse any Burns Supper.

AE
FOND KISS

Ae fond kiss and then we sever;Ae fareweel, and then for ever!Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Footnote : Burns ( Sylvander ) penned this song towards the close of 1791 and enclosed it with a letter from Dumfries, dated 27 December 1791, to Clarinda. The song celebrates their last meeting on 6 December 1791. Mrs Nancy McLehose ( Clarinda ) sailed from Leith in February 1972 to join her husband in Jamaica and although she returned to Scotland she and Burns never met again. She penned a memorandum, dated 6 December 1831, which said, "This day I can never forget. Parted with Burns in the year 1791, never more to meet in this world. Oh, may we meet in heaven!" Both Scott and Byron praised this beautiful song.

Holy Willie was a rather oldish bachelor
elder, in the parish of Mauchline, and much and justly famed for that
polemical chattering, which ends in tippling orthodoxy, and for that
spiritualized bawdry which refines to liquorish devotion. In a
sessional process with a gentleman in Mauchline-a Mr.Gavin
Hamilton-Holy Willie and his priest, Father Auld, after full hearing
in the presbytery of Ayr, came off but second best; owing partly to
the oratorical powers of Mr. Robert Aiken, Mr. Hamilton's counsel; but
chiefly to Mr. Hamilton's being one of the most irreproachable and
truly respectable characters in the county. On losing the process, the
muse overheard him [Holy Willie] at his devotions, as follows:-

O Thou, who in the heavens
does dwell,Who, as it pleases best Thysel',Sends ane to heaven an' ten to hell,A' for Thy glory,And no for ony gude or illThey've done afore Thee!

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